Our Vision

At Cambridge you are part of exceptional and deep educational experiences.

Changemakers offers Cambridge+: the time, space and deep skills to learn more about who you are, how you can be all you can be in the world, and how to be the change you want to see. 

Changemakers helps you explore your sense of purpose, your strengths and values. It builds essential, gritty, real-world skills to help you make a difference. And it puts all of this in context of the particular challenges of our time: climate, inequality, political crisis.

In other words, it deals with how change works and how you can help shape it. 

The programme is built around the idea that long-term system transformation is possible with:

• a strong sense of SELF connected to others and places
• skill in being in SOCIETY with awareness, vision, compassion and effectiveness
• and a pragmatic, powerhouse of cross-disciplinary understanding about our WORLD

The programme is organised around a Core Curriculum, supported by Extended Elements. You can sign up for one or two events, or all. There's no minimum requirement & no assessment, and all Homerton students are welcome. 

Core Curriculum  

The core of Changemakers' curriculum is built around these three domains: SELF, SOCIETY, WORLD. In each domain you're invited to focus on clusters of crucial attributes and skillsets via a mixture of theoretical, applied and embodied learning. 

Each year an annual residential offers a deep dive journey across these three areas. We also offer a day-long workshop each year on each domain: Self (Michaelmas), Society (Lent), World (Easter).  Across the programme you have the opportunity to build awareness, mindsets and skills; and to develop these in practical ways through volunteering, setting up your own initiatives, and collaborating with others. 

SELF

• Compassionate mindsetsI
• Inner compass & motivation
• Understanding who we are, what has shaped us, and the values we hold
• Presence and quieting the ever-present internal chatter to gain focus, clarity and calm
• Emotional intelligence
• Empathy
• Resilience

SOCIETY

• Creativity
• Deep listening
• Emerging forms of leadership, including co-creation, facilitation, weaving
• Problem-solving & decision-making
• Ethical reasoning
• Networking, sociability and building relationships
• Financial awareness
• Entrepreneurialism, intrapreneurialism and innovation
• Practical nous (communications, pitching, rhetoric, public speaking, group work)
• Collaboration & co-creation
• Working in and with uncertainty

WORLD

• Understanding power and influence 
• Difference, diversity, equality
• Systems thinking, ecological thinking
• Regenerative design and systems
• Levers for change
• Power flows and interventions
• Global citizenship

Extended Elements

Around the core curriculum Changemakers offers opportunities to grow your skill, meet others and develop changemaking initiatives: via Tuesday Conversations, roundtables, mentoring, an annual seed fund, workshops and socials, and a student ambassador scheme.

Building Changemakers your way

You can come to as many or as few Changemakers events as you wish: nothing is compulsory*, there are no grades and no minimum requirements. The programme is entirely modular, designed to fit in with you study and other extracurricular activities.

If you're an undergraduate or PhD you might consider a day long virtual residential and Tuesday conversations in first year, the annual residential at the beginning of second year, and mentoring in your third. If you're an MPhil, you might begin with the annual residential, get involved in the Ambassador scheme and come to a day-long session to top up your skills. Most importantly, you can craft a programme that works with your interests and energy. 

All programme elements are free and every Homertonian is welcome, including alumni less than 5 years out from graduation. 

(*With the exception of the Seed Fund and Ambassador Schemes which require attendance at a minimum number of Changemaker events.)

Rationale

Changemakers is underpinned by our conviction that a more just, equitable and sustainable world is only possible if we connect our inner life with vision and high levels of pragmatic, well-informed skill. And that we do this within networks and communities committed to change.

The programme is designed based on research from psychology, leadership, sustainability, anticipation studies, education, community-building, innovation and business: and on our fifty years collective experience leading change-making initiatives. Our team and faculty think deeply and broadly, bringing that to bear on the events and experiences on offer. 

And because a strong network is fundamental to a) building a wide perspective and b) getting things done, there are many opportunities to meet leading thinkers, influencers and visionaries; and to work with changemaking students beyond your discipline. 

We're devoted to modelling a way of working that is inclusive, courageous, intellectually rigourous and always compassionately humane. Always in the service of quiet and consistent transformation so that every system, and every creature now and yet to come can thrive.